


The Obscure

by yesj (phizzle)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-16
Updated: 2008-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:16:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phizzle/pseuds/yesj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The obscure we see eventually.  The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Obscure

**Author's Note:**

> It's sort of inevitable by this point that I'll find a way to turn people into fluffy animals. Moo ha ha.

It’s a very simple leap of logic to make, and Rodney does not know why John hasn’t made it yet.

“McKay?” John calls, and Rodney just sits, staring incredulously at him.

“I’m right _here_,” he huffs; but of course, all that comes out is _mrrorww_ because the Ancient device that changes your molecules just hit him with the _kitten ray_.

Ronon is staring at him. “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” he mutters, crouching down. He looks like it pains him to say, “McKay?”

“_Thank_ you,” Rodney says to him, sounding like _mraaow_. “Now why,” he turns to John, _mroowaaow_, “can Ronon put two and two together and make four and _you’re_ still stuck on three?”

“Yep, that’s McKay,” Ronon mutters. John hears him, turns back around. He has his handgun out, pointing at the room.

“Are you certain?” Teyla asks Ronon, peering at Rodney. He tries to roll his eyes, but it doesn’t really work. He gets slightly dizzy.

“Of _course_ he’s certain. Did you not just see me turn into a cat? Come on, you all saw it!”

Ronon nods. “No cat talks that much.”

John steps closer, carefully. “Are you telling me that – that _kitten_ is McKay?” He’s looking at Rodney like he’s afraid he might step on him. Or that Rodney might bite him, which he damn well _should_ be scared about, because Rodney is seriously considering it.

“It would appear so.” Teyla crouches closer, she and Ronon almost kneeling. “We had better take him back to Atlantis.”

“Wait, wait, let’s all be very clear on this.” John holds up both hands. One still has his gun in it, and Rodney watches its movements nervously. “You’re saying that McKay,” he waves the gun at about head height, “just turned into a cat.” He waves it at Rodney, who steps back, legs tangling in the pants he was wearing.

“Watch where you’re pointing that thing,” he grumbles. “Look, this is obviously something a science team should check out, get the schematics and see what exactly it does and how it does it, because it _clearly_ is meant to change molecular structure, but I couldn’t collect enough –”

“Okay,” John interrupts, holstering his gun, “okay. That’s Rodney.”

“Come on,” Ronon says, leaning forward as though to scoop Rodney up.

“Hey, hey, wait a minute,” Rodney starts to protest.

“What, you want to walk all the way back to the gate?” Ronon asks him.

Rodney quiets. “Well. No, I guess not.” He lets Ronon scoop him up and carry him in the crook of one arm. “This is humiliating,” he mutters.

“Thought you’d want to be carried around,” Ronon says, looking down at him and smiling. Like this is _funny_.

“Oh ha ha.” Rodney shifts, but actually, maybe it _is_ sort of enjoyable, not having to tramp back through the forest. Why’d the Ancients have to build an outpost so far from the gate anyway?

When they get back to the gate room, Woolsey is just coming out of his office; he sees them, stops, and practically jogs down to them.

“Where’s McKay?” he asks, very obviously doing another head count. Rodney tries to raise a paw, but his legs don’t bend that way.

“He’s here.” Ronon lifts his elbow a little, and Rodney grouses at him to stop tilting.

“Dr McKay had an … accident,” Teyla clarifies to Woolsey’s eyebrows, which would have disappeared into his hairline if he had one low enough. “We were examining the outpost the previous team discovered; it appeared that there was a device there capable of turning a human … into a cat. Dr McKay was in its path.”

“Judging by the readings I managed to get before I was – well – it looks like someone tried to adjust what the device could do; now, I’m fairly sure –”

“Hey,” Ronon stops him.

“Right.” Rodney deflates. “You can’t understand me, because all you hear is yowling. I get it. I’ll be … quiet now.” He burrows a little into Ronon’s elbow, settling in to sulk.

“We don’t know what the device was for –” John starts.

“Uh, I do!” Rodney pipes up. John doesn’t miss a beat.

“Or how to reverse it,” he continues.

“Yes. Well. I don’t actually … know how to do that either.” Rodney rests his chin on Ronon’s arm. If he could just have some _time_, with a laptop or two and that device –

“I’ll have a science team go back there,” Woolsey nods.

“Tell them to be careful,” John says, and turns to leave.

“Colonel,” Teyla stops him, “shouldn’t we take Dr McKay to the infirmary?”

“I’ll go,” Ronon offers.

“You do that.” John doesn’t look at Rodney as he walks away. Rodney watches his back as John takes the stairs two at a time, then disappears around a corner.

Jennifer’s face, when she sees Ronon walk in with a kitten, is priceless. “Well hey, where did you find this little guy?” she coos, moving closer and reaching to pet him.

“This little guy is McKay,” Ronon tells her, and her hand stops a few inches from Rodney’s head.

“Hey,” he calls up, “don’t stop her! I was going to enjoy that.”

She pulls her hand back. “That’s … Rodney?”

“Yup.” Ronon gives her this smile, and Rodney tilts his head a little. Since the whole turning-into-a-cat thing, he has a whole mess of other instincts, and smells have been a lot stronger. He’s just been switching to those as a means of information collecting – they’re quite useful, actually – and there is definitely a pheromone Ronon’s giving off.

“But – how?” Jennifer’s eyes have gone wide. _She looks cute when she’s startled_, Rodney thinks.

If the pheromones are any indication (and he’s a genius _cat_ now, of course his sense of smell is accurate) Ronon thinks so too. “Some Ancient device. Science team’s checking it out.”

“Wow. Guess things really do happen in the Pegasus galaxy.” She’s staring at Rodney again. He ignores the instinct to preen, as that would involve licking his own fur, and if there’s one thing he’s learned about flirting over the years, it’s that licking your own fur is a bad idea.

“Yeah. Anyway, we just wanted to get him checked out. Make sure he’s all right.”

“You mean you – want _me_ to –” She’s startled again.

“It’s not like we have vets here,” Rodney points out. “Besides, I’m still me, I’m just … cat-shaped. Look, just check I don’t have any diseases or fleas. I don’t think I have because I haven’t been scratching, but the diseases maybe, there’s this –”

“McKay,” Ronon says, and Rodney grumbles into silence. Ronon looks at Jennifer and says, “He still talks too much. At least I can get him to shut up now.” He grins, a charming grin packed to the gills with pheromones.

“Hey! You’re _flirting_! And _hey_! I do not talk too much!” Rodney tries to extract himself from Ronon’s arm, but Ronon doesn’t even move his face or his expression, just brings his other arm up and covers Rodney’s whole body with one hand. “I’ll bite you,” Rodney warns, but then he thinks about how very much smaller he is now and how very hard Ronon can kick his ass even when he’s _big_. “Or not,” he grumbles, curling up into a ball.

And then he smells other pheromones, and oh, they’re coming from _Jennifer_. She’s giggling a little bit, and looks down for a moment, and Rodney mutters, “Oh just kill me now.” Fine. You know what, he’s not going to get in the way of Ronon … well, ever. It’s a really bad idea, and Rodney likes having feeling in all of his limbs. He said he wouldn’t back down, but.

“Okay, I guess I’d better check him out,” she says. Ronon hands him over, and Rodney just goes limp, because he doesn’t have any fight in him. _Fine_. He’s a cat, Ronon’s this attractive, charismatic Satedan, there’s no competition. Ronon would probably have enough actual time to spend some with her without Atlantis combusting or falling back into the sea or whatever disaster is going on this week anyway.

“What is it?” Ronon asks, and his voice is now a little tighter.

“I don’t know, it’s just – he’s just kind of limp. Maybe he’s sick.” Jennifer lays him cautiously on a bed, and Rodney curls into a circle, paw resting on his tail.

“I’m not sick,” he says, because they can’t hear what he’s saying, “I’m just suffering the pangs of rejection.” He thinks of John taking off without even looking at him, and covers his eyes with a paw and his tail. “I’m a cat, you like Ronon, Sheppard won’t even _look_ at me,” he mews, the sound muffled through fur. “I may as _well_ just lick myself.”

“McKay. Hey. McKay.” Rodney uncovers his eyes, sees Ronon leaning closer. “You all right?”

“Well, at least someone cares,” he sighs, flopping back and stretching out. “All right. You do your doctor thing. I’ll just lie here. _A cat_.” He sees Jennifer and Ronon exchange a look, mostly worry, and adds, “And do you _have_ to make me smell the attraction? It’s gross, stop it.”

Jennifer’s hands are warm, and she’s delicate, examining him carefully. She gets the smallest scanner and checks him over, takes some blood, looks at his teeth and his ears. When she’s done, he mutters, “It’s probably best I’m not trying to flirt with you any more, or that would have been even _more_ humiliating.”

“His fur’s a little dirty,” she says to Ronon, and come _on_, that’s just not _fair_, “and I’ll have to see what his blood work says, but he seems fine. Healthy. A healthy _cat_, but the science team’ll work out how to change him back, right?”

“Right,” Ronon nods, like there’s no other choice. Oh God, please let there be no other choice, because if Rodney has to be _stuck_ like this, he might just have to run under the boots of the Marines.

“You’ll be okay, Rodney,” Jennifer says to him, and that’s nice, that’s affection he can smell, she _does_ like him after all. Maybe not in a … wants-to-push-him-against-the-lab-wall-and-screw-him way, but it’s a way, kind of, in the sense of … not at all wanting him like she obviously wants Ronon, oh God, can we _go now_? “Just – start washing your fur, okay? Don’t want you to be dirty.” She smiles at him, scritches his head a little, and that distracts him for a second – it feels _nice_ – from what she just said.

“Are you _kidding me_?” he erupts, when she takes her hand away. “You just said I’m dirty! I’m not putting my tongue in _dirt_, what, you want me to _catch something_?”

“O…kay, clearly I said something wrong.” She looks to Ronon, who just shrugs.

“Oh yes, you’re very helpful,” Rodney snaps at him. He walks to the edge of the bed, intending to jump down; but he sees how far it is, scrambles back. “Okay, maybe not,” he says, sitting down.

“Yeah, don’t jump from a height like that. I mean, I know you’re a cat and you’ll land on your feet,” Jennifer says, reaching to scritch behind his ears, and that’s _good_, “but you’re –” She tries to suppress a giggle. “You’re still Rodney,” she finishes, lips quirking up in a smile.

“Hey!” he jumps up.

“Sorry. Sorry.” She composes her face with difficulty. Ronon’s hiding a smile in his shoulder.

“Okay, you know what? Screw you two. No wait, don’t, bad phrasing. Or at least wait until I’m gone.” He goes to the edge again, contemplates the jump for about ten seconds – _come on McKay, you’re a cat, cats land on their feet, you could jump that easily_ – and then looks up. “Can one of you…?”

“Here.” Ronon lifts him. “You want to go to your quarters?”

Rodney sighs, resigned to being carried. Which, actually, that doesn’t sound so bad. “Yes. Please.”

They’re almost there when Teyla catches up with them. She puts some ceramic bowls down on the floor inside; one contains water and the other some makeshift cat food, mostly meat. He sniffs at it, and looks up at her. “This is kind of disgusting,” he observes, but he’s hungry, so he starts to eat. “And surprisingly good.” He wolfs down the rest, and Ronon and Teyla leave, so when he laps up the water he doesn’t try not to spill any. It’s _hard_ to keep it all going into his mouth when all he has to get it there is a tongue.

“What now?” he mutters when he’s done, sitting back to lick around his mouth. He’s pretty sleepy, and given that he hasn’t had more than about four hours’ sleep at a time since he arrived on Atlantis, and cats need a lot of sleep anyway, and now that he _is_ one it’s not like he can save the city every seven days (give or take), maybe he could nap. Just for a little while, because he has to help Zelenka work out exactly how the device works – he has a pretty good idea, he just needs more data than he had time to collect – and how to reverse the process. But he could nap before then, he –

The next thing he knows, he smells something different. He opens his eyes, and it’s night. His vision has switched to greens and blacks, like night vision goggles, only he puts together the image by smell. It’s a slightly different view to what’s actually there. The laundry basket seems bigger, for one thing. Also, John is wider and has tendrils swishing out and – John.

John is here.

“You _asshole_,” Rodney launches himself at him. “I get myself turned into a cat, you won’t even _look_ at me, and now you’re here watching me _sleep_? What is _wrong_ with you?”

“Hey, hey,” John has jumped up and is backing away from what he must be seeing as a hissing, very pissed off cat. “Easy, Rodney, easy. It’s just me.”

“I _know_ it’s just you, I’m not a _moron_, why do you think I’m _pissed_?” Rodney stalks up to him and sinks two claws into John’s bare foot.

“_Ow_, you son of a –” He hops into the bathroom. Rodney smells blood, and sits back, satisfied. He’s not a fighting man; he just wanted revenge. John with a bleeding foot, that’s adequate vengeance for ignoring him and being creepy. Now they can talk like civilised … man and cat. Or, okay, Rodney can talk and John can totally miss what he’s saying. So it’s not like anything will have changed, apart from the fur.

The bathroom light goes off and the bedroom one comes on, and Rodney can see by light and not just smell again. It feels less accurate, despite everything shrinking (or growing) back to its actual size. John pads back into the room, carefully, a Band-Aid on his foot.

“What was that for?” he asks, eyeing Rodney warily.

Rodney rolls his head in lieu of his eyes. “What do you _think_? You were watching me sleep. After blanking me.” And because he can’t hear him, he adds, “You hurt my feelings,” sitting down heavily and curling his tail around his paws.

“Well, whatever it was, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry.” John has his hands out, palms down and spread, as though it’ll steady him somehow.

“I won’t bite,” Rodney snaps at him, leaping back onto the bed and sinking down on his belly, tucking his front paws into his chest. “Promise,” he adds, because John’s still looking at him like he might pounce at any second. “Oh for – I’m not _going_ to,” Rodney huffs at that look. “If I were going to pounce, I’d wiggle my – look, just trust me, I won’t. You’re not worth it,” he finishes, looking down. Suddenly, he doesn’t want John to be there any more.

“Listen, I just wanted to come check up on you, make sure you’re okay.” John sits, gingerly, on the edge of the bed. It’s starting to really piss Rodney off, the way John is _still_ not looking at him except like he’s afraid of something, afraid of _Rodney_. John can fuck off, John can _fuck off_.

“Oh, so _now_ you care. Right.”

John looks several inches to Rodney’s left. “Okay? We okay? You’re not going to attack me again?”

“No, I’m not going to attack you again,” Rodney sighs. “You’re safe.” _For now_, he silently adds. Not that he couldn’t have said it, but he just feels like … not. He’s tired of saying things to John and not getting _heard_.

“What did you just say?”

“I said I’m not going to attack you,” Rodney repeats, and now he’s really annoyed, but he looks up and John is looking _right back at him_.

“Yeah, I thought that’s what you said.” John is breathing carefully. “Rodney, when did you start to talk?”

“Oh, let’s see, when I was _two_?”

“No, I meant – when you’re a cat.”

“Wait.” Rodney sits up, very sudden. “You can hear me? You hear _words_?”

“Yeah. Except you just stopped mid-sentence and that last thing was a meow.”

“That’s impossible. I mean, I’m – I’m speaking like I have been this _whole time_, just talking, and now –”

“Yeah, no, all meows again. Rodney, what the hell just happened?”

“I don’t know.” Rodney sits back, mind working fast. “I just know that I … really wanted you to hear me.”

“Yeah, I still can’t –”

“Maybe,” Rodney starts pacing, “maybe that reading I got – there were energy spikes right before I got hit, maybe it does more than one thing! Maybe – so the biggest spike was obviously changing molecular structure, but maybe the other ones were – where’s the tablet?” He looks up at John, urgent. “The tablet I had at the outpost, where is it?”

“You want the tablet?” John’s brow is wrinkled, like he’s trying to concentrate hard enough to keep up.

“Yes, yes, the one I had, the one with the readings on it – where did it go? Was it you or Teyla who took my – uh, my clothes and my pack?”

“I put it here,” John jumps up and over to the desk, picks up the tablet and switches it on. He lays it in front of Rodney. “I’m getting one word in ten, the rest is meows.”

“Just let me work a minute.” He doesn’t have opposable thumbs, but he can try reaching over; it’s slow, but –

“Woah,” John’s hand shoots out to steady him as he almost tips over. “Be careful, Rodney.”

“I will, I will.” He tries to steady himself, but keeps almost tipping over whenever he reaches across the screen, so John scoops him up into his hands and holds him just over the tablet. His hands are warm, and Rodney goes still. “Sheppard?” he says. It doesn’t have much sound in it.

“Yeah?” John’s voice sounds oddly quiet too. Rodney’s heart skips a beat.

“What are you doing?”

“Just making sure you can reach. If you … just asked me what I think you just asked me.” John’s voice sounds normal again, and Rodney nods.

The distance to the screen is just right, so he works, quiet, John holding him. “Looks like someone was trying to change the settings recently,” he murmurs, reading the data. “I still don’t know exactly what the device is supposed to do, but it’s definitely been changed … pretty recently, maybe only a couple of years. I could try to – oh no.” He looks up, turns around to look John in the eye. John puts him back down on the bed. “Michael.”

“What? What is it?” It’s clear John can’t hear him. Rodney makes a frustrated sound in his throat.

“Someone was trying to change the settings, it – it’s a machine to change molecular structure, designed to deliver a concentrated beam to a small area, most likely some sort of treatment the Ancients devised for the Pegasus locals when they got sick. The way nanites repair unhealthy cells, that’s what this machine is supposed to do. I think. But _someone_ tried to adjust it, increase the strength and target area of the beam, eventually it could change a human into something else. I don’t know how cat DNA got into the mix, maybe some creature native to the planet wandered in after he abandoned it, and the machine somehow picked up the information and beamed it back at me, but I think Michael was trying to turn humans into half-Wraith with it. Another of his experiments.”

John’s staring at him, perplexed. “I didn’t get any of that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Rodney turns back to the tablet to avoid strangling him, “you never _hear me_. The whole time I’ve known you I’ve said it, not in so many words, maybe, but it’s not like you would’ve got the message even if I _did_, I was _dying_ and you were the only thing I never _forgot_ and you _still didn’t get it_ because how many ways does a guy have to say he’s into you before you _hear him_? Stupid fucking John Sheppard, even Zelenka can tell, and that’s saying something.” The second largest energy spike was in a part of the machine he hadn’t collected data from, so that bit is useless without whatever the science team will be getting or will already have by now, but the last one, the third and smallest, that one should be connected to the parts he managed to get from it. He nudges John’s hand, and John startles, picks him up again and holds him over the tablet so he can work.

He slowly becomes aware of a pause. It’s like it hangs in the air, the smell of – something, maybe shock? It’s coming from behind and above him, but he’s working and it’s not important, he can’t smell anyone else in the room so they’re not being attacked, and maybe one day his life will be such that his first thought isn’t to check for hostile intruders, or even to think _the words_ ‘hostile intruders’ because that’s all John and John is stupid anyway, and apparently right now he’s disconcerted, but Rodney’s _busy_ and he doesn’t _care_.

“Huh,” he mutters after another five minutes have passed, waves of shock still coming off John’s body, though his hands haven’t moved, “looks like the smallest energy reading is from a part still connected to its original function. That must be why I haven’t had a headache or nausea or been dizzy except when I move my head too fast.” He stops. “And I’m hungry, but I don’t think I’m hypoglycaemic. I’m not shaking and I haven’t eaten in –” he checks the clock “– seven hours.” He sits back. “Wow. I’m _healthy_. There’s … actually nothing wrong with me.” He looks down. “Except that I’m a cat, of course.”

He turns around, and John’s just staring into space. If he could, Rodney would snap his fingers in front of John’s eyes. Instead, he taps a paw on his wrist. “Hello? Sheppard? Sheppard!”

“Huhwuh?” John snaps out of it, blinking rapidly. “Sorry, Rodney, I … I um, what did you say?”

Rodney eyes him with as much contempt as it is possible to convey with the eyes of a cat. John looks rather startled. “Something highly scientific and beyond your understanding, I’m sure. What does it matter, anyway, all you got was meows.”

John shakes his head as if to clear it, and sets him down. “No, I … I didn’t catch that. I’m going to … um. You should probably … sleep. Or eat! I could get you something to eat.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, you just – sit tight, I’ll get you – unless you want to sleep, I could leave, or – but I’ll get you something from the mess hall, I’ll –”

“You’re panicking.” Rodney can smell it. “Sheppard, what’s going on?”

“I’ll be – right back.” John nearly trips on his way to the door.

“Sheppard? Sheppard?” Rodney jumps down and runs after him, but the door closes before he gets to it. “_John_?”

He’s back five minutes later, holding a bottle of water, a cup of jello, and a tuna sandwich. “This was all I could find,” he says, crouching down to pour the water into the ceramic bowl. Rodney trots over, sniffs at his hands. They’ve been in his hair, there’s traces of gel all over them.

“Sheppard, what’s wrong?” He smells calmer than he was six minutes ago.

“Listen, Rodney. The science team got some readings, they’ll be back tomorrow. If you want, I can take you to the labs –”

“Okay, great, but what’s _wrong_?”

“– and we’ll figure this out. I’ll get you back, I promise.”

Rodney stares at him. “What the hell is going on?”

“So, um. I guess I’ll.” He’s arranging the tuna sandwich and jello in the other ceramic bowl, and then he straightens up, gestures at the door. “You should eat. And uh, get some rest. Cats need a lot of that, right? Don’t want you getting sick or anything.”

John just stands, for a minute, smelling nervous, and Rodney watches him. Silent, because he’s so surprised he has no idea what to _say_.

“So um, goodnight Rodney.”

“Good –” John is gone, the door sliding shut after him. “Night,” Rodney finishes. He sits for a moment, just blinking, and then the tuna reaches his nose and he walks over to the bowls and tries to think of some way to eat the sandwich without getting fur in it. In the end, he just puts his face in the bowl and starts chomping. It’s undignified, but at least there’s nobody else around, and really, there’s no other way to eat a sandwich when all you have is paws and you don’t want to use those because you really don’t plan on developing furballs.

=^=

“No, it’s on that one – oh hello, Colonel.” Zelenka pushes his glasses up his nose, and sees Rodney. “Oh! Hello Rodney.”

“Hi,” Rodney returns. He wouldn’t have thought he’d be as delighted as he is at hearing Zelenka just say hello, but all the way to the labs he’d hardly had a moment’s peace, and Zelenka just accepting his existence without nearly fainting is an enormous relief. It seems that as attractive as John Sheppard on his own is to women, John Sheppard with a fluffy tiny kitten is somewhat of a magnet. It doesn’t help that John told half of them Rodney is a kitten he’d saved from a burning building on their last mission and smuggled back to Atlantis. Rodney is still plotting further revenge for that one. Biting his wrist just doesn’t feel like _enough_.

“You’re just in time, we’re trying to process the data the science team was able to collect.” Zelenka taps at the tablet in his hands, and types a command into the nearest laptop. One of his team – Olson? Markson? Something -son – leads him over to a screen. Rodney and John follow.

“I brought McKay’s tablet, he had some information he was working on last night.” John holds it out.

Zelenka starts tapping on the screen, and Rodney unwinds himself from the crook of John’s arm, leaning over to help. “I took readings from the device as it was powering up, and there were these energy spikes –” he shows Zelenka the readings from those “– I got some incomplete readings on the largest and the smallest, I’m pretty sure they’re to change molecular structure and heal any unhealthy cells –”

“Really?” Zelenka interrupts. “You’re not sick, at all? And it’s not nanite technology?”

“Nanites?” John interjects, a sudden burst of horror flooding Rodney’s nose.

“No, not nanites. And I’m fine.” Rodney jumps the short way down to the table, and Zelenka holds the tablet a little lower, so they both can still reach.

“It’s not nanites, it’s an Ancient machine to repair unhealthy cells,” Zelenka explains to John. “It must still work, Rodney says he feels fine.”

“Wait a minute. You can understand him? You can hear him say words?”

“Well, no, he’s meowing,” Zelenka pushes his glasses up again, “but it’s in the readings he’s showing me, and we … communicate in our native languages on a daily basis, so I am used to understanding Rodney’s meaning.”

“We speak scientist,” Rodney clarifies.

“Oh.” John nods, in that way he does when he’s pretending he doesn’t get it. It’s the same way he nods when he really _doesn’t_ get it, though, so sometimes Rodney isn’t sure if he can tell the difference or if he’s imagining it. “Did you just say … there’s a machine to repair unhealthy cells, like the nanite technology but not nanites?”

“Sheppard –” Rodney moves closer.

“Yes.” Zelenka nods, looking down. “If we could have found this two years ago, and … if it didn’t turn people into cats –”

“Yeah,” John interrupts. “Yeah.” He snaps out of it when Rodney puts a paw on his arm.

“Nobody knew,” he says, looking up at John and _willing_ him to hear him again. “If we did –”

“Yeah.” John moves away. The moment dissipates. “Well, you two, uh … go ahead. Do what you do. Is it okay if I come back for him later?”

And right there, things are just how they were a minute ago. “I am perfectly capable of making my own way back to my room, okay?” Rodney huffs. “I will not be your babe magnet again.”

John looks helplessly at Zelenka. “He says he can get back on his own, and something about a … magnet? I am not sure.” Zelenka shrugs.

“Hey,” John says to Rodney, and he is about three seconds from the glare coming his way, “this could be good for both of us, you know? If they associate you with this cute little fluffy thing, it’ll make them like you more when you’re, you know, back to normal.”

Rodney takes a step back, because the space between their bodies is not big enough to contain how badly he has just been offended. “_Excuse me_? Oh, right, thank you, because apparently I need to be a _kitten_ to get women to like me. We can’t all be Han Solo, you dick.”

Zelenka is squinting at John. Rodney notices this when Zelenka says, “Are you talking about using Rodney’s current state to get women?”

John shifts. “Well, when you put it like that –”

“Get out,” Rodney spits.

“I’m gone.” John turns, stops, turns back, and says, “Okay, I heard you then. And a minute ago. This is weird.” Rodney glares at him, trying to burn a hole in his uniform. “And I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it … to sound the way it sounded. I’m sorry, okay?”

“I said get out of my lab, Sheppard,” Rodney repeats, slowly and carefully.

“And _I_ said I’m sorry.” John is getting angry, and Rodney can smell fear underneath it, has smelled an undercurrent of it coming off him all morning. It’s not exactly an unusual smell in the city, but right now, John is more afraid the angrier he gets. If it’s even that way around.

“I think it would be best if you leave,” Zelenka said, eyeing them both warily.

“Like I said,” John isn’t taking his eyes off Rodney, his voice the sort of calm that’s one straw away from snapping, “I’m gone.” And then he is, Rodney’s eyes following his back.

“He’s still being a vůl?” Zelenka mutters.

“When you talk like that I feel like a gossipy old woman,” Rodney grumbles, turning back to the tablet. “Yes, he’s still being a vůl.”

Zelenka reaches out, too quickly for him to be thinking about it, and pats Rodney’s shoulder. Rodney relaxes slightly.

“Show me the readings the team got,” he changes the subject, moving over to look at Zelenka’s tablet. “Maybe if we put them together with – oh hold on a minute.” He tries to reach over to touch the screen with a paw, but unbalances; Zelenka’s hands dart out and hold him steady. “This second energy spike, the reading suggests – I know what it does.” He sits back, feels Zelenka’s hands move him back onto the desk; he turns to him, tail flicking as he talks, “It’s neurological, the signal targets brain function, probably in a very specific area. Judging by how much Ancient technology works by thinking at it, and that you need the ATA gene to activate the technology, it follows that if they wanted to leave something like this with the Pegasus locals, there’d need to be some sort of way for them to power it so the Ancients didn’t have to make medical runs all the time. That outpost was probably the local hospital. So they programmed the device to connect in with whoever uses it, so they can make it work just by thinking it. I guess they’d need someone who’d used it before, but there’d probably be plenty of them in the settlement right near the gate. When he tampered with it, Michael must have knocked the programming somehow, because I can make people hear what I’m saying when I really want them to hear me, it’s, it’s like a forceful push.”

“Yes. I … actually heard you say all of that,” Zelenka says, looking and smelling stunned. “I’ll have to go back there to collect more data, I think, we got as much as we could but there’s still more we could know –”

“Right, I’ll come with you,” Rodney nods, standing up.

Zelenka stops, turns to look at him. “No, I think it would be best if you stay here.”

“What? But I’m head of science! It was me who got turned into a cat, and besides, I’m –”

“Rodney.”

“_What_?”

“I don’t –” He says something in Czech, and Rodney can always understand him; this time it’s _I don’t want you to get lost, okay?_ “You’re very small,” he finishes, in English.

“Oh, thanks.” He wants to cross his arms, but obviously, he can’t. “I’ll just work on the data here then.”

“Zelenka,” says Ronon from the doorway. “Can I borrow McKay?”

“Tell me we’re going on a science mission or _something_,” Rodney sighs. Ronon looks blankly at him. “Fine, fine. Just don’t make it too long, all right? I have a lot of work to do, and I’m tired.”

Zelenka glances at him, sharp. “You do look tired. Maybe you should sleep, I don’t want you falling over on the laptops –”

“You’re such a mother hen,” Rodney grouses.

Ronon raises an eyebrow. “You know what he’s saying?”

“We speak scientist,” Zelenka explains.

Ronon pauses for a second. “Oh. Okay. You coming, McKay?”

“Yes, I’m coming. Get him on the radio if you need me,” he tells Zelenka, and then Ronon picks him up and carries him out of the lab.

Teyla is waiting a little way down the corridor. “I got him,” Ronon tells her, smile in the sound of it. Rodney looks up at him suspiciously.

“What _is_ this, an ambush? Where are you taking me?” Ronon just keeps on smiling down at him. It is not, in any way, reassuring. “Ronon? Teyla?” Rodney thinks about jumping down and running back to the labs and hiding behind Zelenka’s ankles, but they’re moving too fast and he’d probably break a leg or something. It’s not like he was taught by his mother how to jump safely from moving heights.

They take him to Teyla’s quarters, and … into the bathroom. Where Kanaan is turning the taps off, the tub filled to the brim with soapy bubbles. They smell like lavender. “Is this Dr McKay?” Kanaan asks, moving closer.

“Yes, it’s me.” Rodney looks up at Ronon. “You know, you didn’t have to kidnap me. You could have just _said_ you want to give me a bath, I would’ve come right along.”

“Sorry about this, McKay,” Ronon shrugs.

“Your fur will not clean itself,” Teyla adds, taking him from Ronon’s arms. Ronon yanks his shirt off and kneels beside the tub as Teyla lowers Rodney into the water – or, tries to.

He jumps down. “I can take it from here, really. I … actually kind of like lavender, that was very thoughtful – but really, you don’t have to stay. I can do it.” And then he steps into the bath and sinks.

The water is very, very warm; it might have been a little too hot, but it’s just this side of it and in about two minutes it’ll settle firmly into lovely, but the surface has closed over his tiny little body and Rodney is panicking, limbs flailing out in all directions, trying desperately to swim. He can’t breathe. His eyes are closed, because he doesn’t want to get bubbles in them, but he feels it when someone’s arms come into the water. They scoop him up and he splutters, coughing and gasping, clinging weakly to the side of the bath.

“Please be careful, Rodney,” Teyla says. It’s Ronon who’s holding him, but Teyla and Kanaan are both also kneeling by the bath. With the three of them on one side and the wall on the other, Rodney feels a little claustrophobic. “While I am glad you appear to be enthusiastic about this, you are not your usual size. I would not wish you to drown.”

“Yes, well,” Rodney pants, breath almost back now. “You have a point.”

It’s completely humiliating, Ronon _bathing him_, but at least he doesn’t almost drown after that, and when he’s clean he sits on the side of the bath, batting at the bubbles while Ronon puts his shirt back on. Rodney likes the sight of his paw – he’s a tortoiseshell, like the cat he had as a kid, only he has white paws and a white chest and she didn’t – against the bubbles, encased in them. It’s been so long since he could even stop and appreciate something so small that he just lets himself play for a minute, because for now he doesn’t have to save everybody’s lives, and he’s sleepy and still warm from the water, although he’s rapidly getting very cold and starting to shiver, but it’s a nice, quiet, fun little moment, knocking the bubbles around on the surface with a paw. They feel a little tingly on the sensitive pads. He’d smile if his mouth weren’t already in the shape; instead, suddenly, he hears a low rumble. He’s purring.

Ronon kneels down again, holding a large towel out. “That’s adorable,” he says, deadpan. Rodney swats at his hand.

“Shut up, for once in my life I’m actually happy. This is a rare thing, don’t spoil it.” He jumps onto Ronon’s outstretched, towel-covered arms, and Ronon folds the material over him, rubbing at his fur gently. Rodney rolls himself in the towel until it’s several layers thick. He’s warm again, and he just wants to nap and dry out. He curls up, eyes closing.

“Hey, you tired?” Ronon reaches a finger out and pets the top of his head. Rodney ignores the instinct to nuzzle and just nods instead. Ronon takes him into Teyla’s room and sets him down on the bed, and Rodney can’t even process all the smells – most of them read _baby_ – before he feels himself falling asleep.

When he wakes up, his fur is dry but the towel is damp, so he crawls out of it. Kanaan is sitting on the floor nearby, a blanket spread out and Torren sitting on it, holding a rattle.

Kanaan looks up. “You’re awake. Here,” he gestures, “would you like to play with Torren?”

Rodney thinks about it for a minute; Torren is twice his size now and might pull his tail, or yank his whiskers, or any one of the vast number of things children do with cats. On the other hand, it’s _Torren_, and much as Rodney doesn’t like kids he has to admit he sort of wants Torren to like him. He did deliver him, after all. So he jumps down and goes over to the blanket and sits in front of them. “Hello,” he says.

Torren’s eyes go wide. He drops his rattle and stretches his arms out towards Rodney, and it should be ridiculous but really, it’s just cute. Rodney walks over, carefully, and Torren’s face breaks into a huge beam. He looks up at Kanaan and makes a sound, presumably only translatable by parents. “It’s all right,” Kanaan says. “Play nicely. It’s Dr McKay, you like him, don’t you?”

Rodney isn’t at all sure that Torren likes him, babies rarely do, but he’ll take the chance. He walks right up to Torren, sits down, curls his tail over his paws, and repeats, “Hi.”

Torren leans forward, and for a minute Rodney’s afraid he’ll just fall onto his front, but then he realises and bows his head. Torren’s forehead touches his, and Kanaan softly cries, “Good _boy_!” Rodney is ninety percent sure he was talking to the baby, not the cat. Rodney really hopes he was not talking to the cat.

Torren leans back again and makes happy baby sounds. He pats Rodney on the head, and Rodney lets him, although he’s a little heavy-handed. Rodney has to duck by the sixth pat to stop Torren’s hand smashing down on his head, because the fifth time had _hurt_, but Kanaan tells Torren to stop now, don’t do that so hard. Torren must have heard the edge in Kanaan’s voice; he starts crying.

“Oh don’t cry, don’t – it’s okay, look, I’m fine!” Rodney stands as tall as he can, as though that will somehow prove his okayness, but Torren just starts wailing. Rodney slinks away, because he can’t cover his ears and he doesn’t want to make the situation any worse. There’s room under the bed.

“Hey, hey, shh, it’s all right,” Kanaan soothes, picking Torren up and rubbing his back. “There there.” Torren wails louder, so Kanaan stands and begins pacing around with him, jogging him slightly on the spot.

The door opens as Kanaan is asking Torren if he’s hungry, or tired, and John stops on his way in. “Sorry to interrupt,” he glances around the room, “but Teyla said McKay was here, so …”

“I’m here.” Rodney crawls out from his hiding place.

“Got something for you,” John says. Rodney looks over his shoulder at Kanaan and tries to wave, but it isn’t really successful. Kanaan seems to get it, though, and smiles at him. Rodney trots over to John’s ankles; John scoops him up before he can protest, and says a quick goodbye to Kanaan, who is back to trying to soothe Torren.

“I told you before, I won’t be your babe magnet,” Rodney grumbles, trying to jump down as the door closes behind them. John holds on tighter.

“Stop it, McKay! Are you still mad at me? I promise I won’t use you to get women, okay? There? Are you satisfied?”

“You have no idea how much the answer to that question is no.” Rodney stills. “But fine.”

“Good.” John carries him in silence for a minute. “So we’re good, then?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Rodney rearranges himself so his body is tucked against John’s chest, his front paws over John’s arm, so he can see where they’re going and basically sit up. John brings his other hand around and scritches Rodney’s head; startled, Rodney purrs for half a second before swallowing it.

They get to John’s quarters, and he pauses at the door. “So I guess, really, I just … wanted to say that I’m sorry. So uh, yeah. Anyway.”

Rodney peers up at him. “What? Sorry for what?”

John just opens the door and takes Rodney to the middle of the room, sets him down on the floor. “I uh, I hope you like it.” He smells nervous, but Rodney barely notices.

There’s a banquet in front of him. All of his absolutely _favourite_ things to eat, or most of them anyway, all set out in bowls, arranged on the floor in the shape of the Atlantis gate address. The smells roll off the food and his mouth waters, it all looks so _delicious_. He looks up at John and breathes, “You did all this for _me_?”

“I uh, I got you a little bit of everything you like. I checked that it’d be okay for cats, got them to make it a little different so it’d be safe for you, and. It – is okay, right?”

Rodney does the first thing his cat instincts tell him to do; winds around John’s ankles, purring loudly. “_Yes_ it’s okay. Oh my God, I am _so hungry_.” He really, really, really is. The last time he ate was before the _labs_ this _morning_. “Not that this is anything new, but I could kiss you.”

“I guess it’s okay,” John concludes, blowing the air out of his cheeks. He smells like relief. “Go ahead, eat. I’ll uh, I have to go get my own dinner, but I’ll be back after that, okay?”

Not only does he have all this food, he can just _put his face in it_ and not have to worry about trying not to be messy while there’s other people around. He tries to jump up but in order to _stay_ up and climb he’d have to use his claws, and he really doesn’t want to dig them in John now he’s _totally forgiven for everything ever_, so he ends up falling back to the floor. “What, what is it?” John crouches down and Rodney jumps onto his thigh, then up his arm to his shoulder and reaches to lick his cheek, purring and rubbing his head against the newly-damp patch of skin.

John starts laughing, shoulders shaking so hard with it Rodney catches John’s shirt in his claws to avoid being thrown off. “Maybe you should stay a cat, you’re nicer like this,” he snorts.

“Shut up.” Rodney jumps down but he can’t even kick him or anything, he still has all this _food_ and John got it all for him and John may be obnoxious and annoying but he’s pretty okay sometimes. “Now leave, I would like to be alone with this.”

“I’ll see you later.” John laughs one last time, pats Rodney’s head, and goes out. Rodney stands for a minute, completely unable to decide what to eat first, and then dives for the nearest bowl.

He tries not to eat too fast, but everything’s just so _good_ and so _tempting_. He slows down after a minute or two, taking deep breaths and alternating lapping up water. He’s starting to get indigestion, so he just sits back for a few minutes, licking around his mouth and feeling uncomfortable until it passes. After that, he eats more slowly, and by the time he’s full half the bowls are empty. He laps up some more water and makes his way slowly to the sweater that’s lying on the floor, curls up in it, and immediately loses consciousness.

When he wakes up, he’s no longer uncomfortably full, just pleasantly. It’s late, but John’s reading lamp is on and he’s sitting on his bed, legs stretched out in front of him, reading _War and Peace_. Rodney jumps up and sits next to him. “Oh hey, you’re up.” John puts a bookmark between the pages and sets it down.

“You could say that.” He yawns. He’s still really sleepy, he just … thinks it’s stupid to sleep all the way over on the floor when John is right here and the bed is more comfortable anyway.

John puts a hand out, starts stroking Rodney’s head. “You can sleep here if you want.” He stops. “I mean, here, on the bed, like – like!” His eyes go wide. “Like just here, now, if you wanted to, I could read over there –”

“It’s okay, Sheppard.” Rodney fixes him with a look clearly reading _You’re a moron_. “I knew what you meant.”

“Oh.” John had tensed, but now he relaxes, and Rodney takes the opportunity to hop onto his lap, because he gave up on actually getting to be anywhere near John’s lap a long time ago, and he’s only going to be a cat once, and not for much longer – please _God_ – so why not? John tenses again for a second, the air full of the smell of his panic, but Rodney just flops down and John calms. Rodney is tired. John can deal with whatever intimacy issues he has _on his own_, because Rodney is going to sleep some more.

John picks his book up again, but Rodney feels a hand tentatively stroking his back; he relaxes completely, closing his eyes and dozing off again. He’s not at all sure, but John might have said something, maybe to the book, _probably_ to the book, because John saying “Oh yeah, _that’s_ going to end well” to him just makes no sense. When he hears a muttered “The hell, these women are insane,” he concludes that he was correct.

He doesn’t sleep all that deeply. John keeps on stroking him, and it feels _lovely_; he’s warm and full and safe and sleepy and he just purrs, a deep and languid rumble. John pauses to scritch, sometimes, or takes his hand away to turn a page, but Rodney doesn’t break the purr. He hasn’t been this happy in a really long time, and he’s not going to think about turning back into a human and not getting to sprawl out in John’s lap after this, he’s not going to think about going back to trying to get over him because he’s been trying for years and it hasn’t worked, he’s not going to think about the tiny voice at the back of his head with its constant _you do realise you don’t have a chance with him, right?_, he’s not going to think about _anything_, he’s just going to enjoy lying across the thighs of the person he’s most interested in lying across the thighs of, and that’s all. John scritches behind his ears, and Rodney purrs deeper. Eyes closed, half asleep, life just does not get any better than this.

John runs a fingertip absently over Rodney’s ears before turning a page. There’s a slight hitch in the purr as Rodney suppresses a contented sigh, but then John just goes back to scritching the top of Rodney’s head and the purr comes back strong. Rodney settles his head on a paw, throat against John’s leg, purring louder and louder as John keeps stroking and scritching. He could stay like this all night, if John lets him. He starts falling more deeply into sleep, settling in for a longer nap, maybe – and then he feels it.

John is getting hard. Rodney goes still, but he wasn’t really moving before so maybe John won’t notice he’s noticed. He keeps purring, and John keeps scritching, and … John starts to sweat, after a minute. He definitely is trying to act like he isn’t developing a boner, probably from the vibrations of Rodney’s purring, and Rodney should stop that, because this is all kinds of wrong, but he’s pretending to be asleep and maybe he can just keep on giving John a boner just for a few more seconds before he pretends to wake up –

No, no, this is too fucked up. He jumps, stops purring, and blinks up at John. “Um.”

John’s eyes are wide, and he’s flattening his arms to the wall. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to stop it! I didn’t do it, I swear!”

Rodney just stares at him. John is _terrified_. Everything in Rodney’s head goes silent except that one voice, a whisper turning to a vast echo, _you knew he’d never want you, you’re that irritating picky whiny annoying useless little scientist he has to babysit on missions so you don’t get your ass blown up, you know that’s all you’ve ever been to him, he tolerates you_, and Rodney wants to tell it to shut up, wants to run to the door and wave his hand over the panels and _leave_.

“It was you!” John points at him wildly. “You, with the purring! I didn’t – oh, this is so wrong.”

Rodney has no idea why John said the word purring until he tries to stand up and only raises himself a few inches. He doesn’t really register it, too busy with the echoes, trying not to go red until he’s _away_. “Oh, well I’m sorry the very idea of me being near your erect penis is so horrifying for you,” he snaps, jumping down from the bed. The sight of his paws startles him, but his momentum takes him across the floor without thought. “I’ll be in my quarters if the science team needs me. You can screw yourself.”

He stops at the door, turns around, and spits, “Would you _open it_?”

“Right, right, sorry.” John jumps up and opens the door for him, and Rodney shoots out of it as fast as he can. It closes behind him.

He gets a corridor away before Zelenka rounds a corner, talking on his radio. “I can’t see hi- oh! Rodney, there you are, I’ve been looking for you.”

“You have? Is everything okay? The city isn’t being attacked, is it?”

“Everything’s fine, I just need your input on some data.” Zelenka smells a little … off, as he says it, but Rodney is so glad to see him and have something to _do_ he doesn’t really care.

“Brilliant, take me with you.” Zelenka picks him up carefully. He’s a cat person, Rodney suddenly remembers; a while ago they’d had a conversation about their cats back on Earth. He climbs onto Zelenka’s shoulders and winds around his neck, something he hadn’t dared do with Ronon or Teyla and felt too weird (or angry) to try with John. Zelenka just reaches up to pet Rodney’s head, and keeps walking. Sometimes, Rodney thinks he should be nicer to Zelenka.

There are only a few people around when they get to the labs. Rodney stays on Zelenka’s shoulders as he brings up the data on a screen; it’s easier to see it from this height and distance. Rodney reads the numbers and pauses, thinking.

He jumps down onto the desk, turns around, and says, “You know what that data means.” He wishes he could cross his arms, but a glare will do.

Zelenka hangs his head. “Colonel Sheppard called me on the radio, said he was worried about you getting back to your quarters. But I _would_ like your input. I can see what the data _means_ but Rodney, you’re the one living it.” Zelenka shrugs, a helpless half-smile curling one side of his mouth. “It wasn’t really a lie.”

“Oh. Well.” Rodney pauses. “Sheppard was worried about me?”

Zelenka nods. “He just said that you’d gone off and he didn’t want you getting lost, or –”

“I _live here_,” Rodney yowls. “I am perfectly capable of getting home, even as a cat, thank you.”

“Nevertheless, we were worried. The Colonel,” Zelenka amends, “was worried.”

“He’s got a hilarious way of showing it.” Rodney turns back to the screen. “Okay, yes, I see what you were doing here. The strongest DNA reading in its database was cat, almost definitely from some stray who got too near the device. It’s set to mix that with any human who goes near it and flips the on switch, which I … guess I did.”

“Right, but the mix didn’t mix so much as … override your human DNA.”

“Someone turned the dial to eleven,” Rodney remarks, dry. “Can you reverse it?”

“Oh, absolutely, I just … am not quite sure of the programming. I shall need to go back tomorrow for more information on how to program it to reverse the process, but it shouldn’t take more than a day.”

“Good. Excellent. I would like my opposable thumbs back. And to not be in danger of slipping when I pee.” He grimaces, and Zelenka grimaces in sympathy. Or possibly disgust.

“That was something I never wanted to picture, Rodney, thank you.” He wrinkles his nose in distaste, turning back to the laptop screen. “The second energy reading, that … that is proving elusive.”

“But if we could work out how it interacts with brain function, maybe we could use that somehow to activate the parts of the city we haven’t been able to yet!”

“I’m well aware of that, Rodney, but it’s only your first-hand information that even tells us what the effects of it are. There’s nothing in the readings to suggest how it enhances – whatever it enhances! I can’t even find _that_.” Zelenka leans on the table, hands clenched. “I don’t have enough information. I must go back for more, it is a very complicated system.”

“Which is why I should come with you and take a look at it,” Rodney tries, but Zelenka just shakes his head. “Why can nobody even leave me _alone_ for five minutes without worrying I’ll fall down a non-existent hole, or get lost in the city I’ve lived in for over four years, or –”

“Get eaten by something on the planet?” Zelenka is looking at him out of the corner of his eye. Rodney makes a strangled noise.

“Fine. You know what? _Fine_. I’m tiny, I’m a cat, I get that. I’m not _incompetent_. All right?”

Zelenka just sighs. “I know you’re not. I just worry, you’re so small. I can’t help it,” he adds to Rodney’s glare. “Don’t look at me like that, Rodney, if it were me you would be worried.”

Rodney snorts. “Oh please. I’d be spilling coffee on you.”

“You’d be worried.” Zelenka shakes his head, trying to hide a smile. Rodney rolls his eyes, just out of habit, and ends up blinking very hard and giving his head a quick shake to clear the dizziness.

“What else have you got?” he asks, as Zelenka stifles a snort in his clavicle. Rodney is very aware how stupid he must have just looked, and he will appreciate it if Zelenka doesn’t say anything.

“The third energy reading, that definitely heals damaged or unhealthy cells. I’m working on _how_ it does that, and so is Dr Keller. She thinks we could harness the technology and create our own device.”

“That’d be useful in the field, if we could make it hand-held, instant healing for injuries. And hey, could it cure things like – like cancer?”

“I have no doubt of it, if we can build the right programming.”

“Radek,” Rodney starts pacing and purring simultaneously, “we could _cure cancer_.”

“And any number of other diseases – AIDS, heart disease, anything!” Zelenka beams. “As long as we can … program the device so that it doesn’t kill the cells.”

Rodney stops. “What?”

“The uh,” Zelenka pushes his glasses up his nose, “the few experiments we have done tend to … fry the cells instead of healing them. Perhaps they have to be in a more complex organic compound, but I do not wish to test on anything living until we are as sure as we can be that it would not kill them.”

“Yes, let’s not kill any small fluffy animals,” Rodney agrees, shifting. “I’ll take a proper look at it when I’m, you know, me again.”

Zelenka nods, and in the moments after, when neither of them speak, just look at the numbers on the screen, Rodney hears the sound of laptop fans whirring.

=^=

He hears the team come back before he sees them. He’s been in the lab since breakfast, trying to develop some kind of technique for typing that doesn’t involve unbalancing and falling across the keys, or putting out a paw to steady himself and looking up to see _ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd_ on the screen. So far he hasn’t managed it.

“And he’s really okay?” one of the scientists is asking Zelenka as they all swarm into the lab, tablets in hand and sitting immediately at the banks of laptops.

“Dr Keller says he is perfectly healthy.” Zelenka sees Rodney and comes over.

“Who’s okay?” Rodney asks. The other scientist – he’s almost sure her name is Tilney – throws a smile at him.

“I don’t know what it is with your team, but trouble seems to follow you around,” she says, and now Rodney has a sinking feeling.

”Why, why, what happened?”

“McKay.” Rodney looks up; Ronon is leaning against the wall of the lab, holding something in his arms. “Maybe you can get him to stop sulking.” Rodney jumps to the floor – he’s getting better at landing neatly – and goes over. Ronon crouches down.

There’s a kitten in his arms. Mostly black fur, but white whiskers and tail-tip and patches on his paws. “Hi,” the kitten says, moving his mouth like he wants to bite his lip or something.

Rodney peers. “Sheppard?”

Ronon puts the kitten down and stands. “I’ll be back for you later. Woolsey wants a de-briefing.”

Rodney turns back to the black-and-white kitten when Ronon has left. They’re near the door, and scientists are coming and going, careful not to tread on them. Rodney reaches, grabs this new kitten by the scruff of his neck, holds it in his mouth and drags him into a corner, under one of the desks. When they’re there, he lets go and repeats, “Sheppard?”

“Yeah.” John’s voice is smaller, and Rodney can kind of hear meowing, but mostly it’s just John’s voice. He swings a paw and clips him around the ear. “_Ow_! What the hell was that for?”

“You got in the _way of that thing_ even though you _knew what it does_? Oh, you are so stupid. I mean, everyone’s stupid compared to me, but you are _stupid_.”

“Hey, you got in the way of it too, remember?” John shifts out of the reach of Rodney’s paw, but it isn’t going to matter because Rodney is going to _kill him_. “It was an accident, okay?”

“What, one of the scientists who know exactly what they’re doing just _happened_ to accidentally switch it on while you were standing in front of it?”

“Yes.” John fidgets.

“Okay, yes, one of them might do that, but it doesn’t seem _likely_. Why would you be in front of it anyway, you’re not testing it. Or what, did they want to know what happens when you push the big button marked ‘kitten’?”

“Basically.” John is starting to get annoyed, which in kitten form means he puffs his fur up. “So if you’re going to be mad at anyone, don’t get mad at me, okay? It was an _accident_.”

“You look like a fuzzball,” Rodney throws at him, because he does.

“Yeah, and you look … stupid,” John finishes, lamely. He’s shifting his limbs around uncomfortably. “How does this kitten thing work anyway?”

“Well, _you_ get in the way of the molecule-changing Ancient device even when you already know what the consequences will be, and _I_ work out how to change us both back. Now sit down and don’t get in my way.” He starts looking for a route back up to the desk; one of the scientists stands up, so he leaps onto their stool and the desk from there.

John follows him. “Look, Rodney, we should talk about this.”

“What, your stupidity? Sure, right after I reverse the program.” He dodges around a coffee cup and some pencils. John nearly tips the cup over, but the scientist it belongs to snatches it up in time.

“No, Rodney, I mean –” John tries to grab him, but Rodney shakes him off. “_Rodney_. Can we go somewhere?” He narrowly avoids falling off the edge of the desk, stumbling over wires.

“I’m a little busy right now,” Rodney calls over his shoulder. He’s just got back to the laptop he was working on, and Zelenka’s there, integrating the new data with the old. “What have you got?”

“Well, the Colonel’s transformation actually helped, we were able to collect all the readings necessary for figuring out how it does,” Zelenka gestures with a hand, “what it does.”

“See?” John sounds smug. “I helped.”

Zelenka looks at him blankly. “What did he say?” he asks Rodney.

“I thought you speak cat,” John says. Rodney turns to him just so he’ll see the look of contempt.

“He speaks _scientist_ cat, not idiot pilot cat.”

“Hey.” John’s hackles go up again. “I _told_ you, that was an accident.”

Two laptops away, someone sneezes. Zelenka looks up and swears in Czech. “I’d forgotten, I’m so sorry,” he says to the scientist now holding a tissue to his face. “You’d better leave,” Zelenka continues to John and Rodney. “At least three of my team are allergic to cats.”

“What, so I can’t even stay and _help_?” Rodney’s heart sinks. No, no no no, he has to _be here_ and _do something_ and save them all, that’s his job, it’s his _job_.

“If I need you –”

“Right, right, I’ll be in my quarters.” Dejected, Rodney jumps down. John lands awkwardly beside him, and when he tries to follow as Rodney bounds away, his footsteps sound uneven.

“Rodney,” John wheezes slightly, and Rodney reluctantly turns around. John is sprawled, holding his left back leg out. “I think I sprained it.”

“Oh for the love of,” Rodney sighs. He trots back to the desk and calls up, “Radek?”

“Yes?” Zelenka spins around, then looks all the way down.

“Sheppard sprained his leg jumping down,” Rodney sighs, nodding over to where John is lying right in everyone’s way. Trying to crawl _out_ of everyone’s way, but small yowls are coming from him, a constant _owsonofabitchstupidRodneystupidmachinestupidheightsstupidstupid_ in the background. Rodney wishes he could put his head in his hands.

Zelenka radios for someone to come get the kittens, and two minutes later Jennifer shows up. Rodney helps John into her arms and then leaps up himself; Jennifer smiles and nods awkwardly at the scientists as she backs out of the doorway. “So I hear you sprained your leg,” she says brightly to John. Rodney just wants to lean against her and breathe in her scent, she smells so good.

John flicks his tail at him. “Stop looking at her like that.”

Rodney startles, the purr that was building falling away. “Like what?”

“Like you want to sleep in her bra,” John hisses, and oh right, because _he’s_ one to talk.

“You know what, shut up. What do you care, anyway?”

“I don’t,” John bristles, “I’m just saying, it’s a little pathetic.”

Rodney flicks his tail at him. “Just because a woman actually likes me –”

“She likes Ronon better,” John almost sing-songs, and oh, that is low. That is _low_. Rodney reaches over and hits him across the face, because he can’t ball a fist and punch.

“Hey, hey,” Jennifer’s voice cuts in, “stop it. _Stop it_, or I won’t carry you another step.”

Rodney quiets, huddling into the crook of her elbow, as far from John as he can get. “I’ll stop.”

John tilts his head back and forth and mutters a high-pitched echo, _I’ll stop_. Rodney suppresses the urge to kick him.

“Don’t be so childish,” he snaps. “What’s gotten into you today, or is it just that you’re a cat and your mental age has reverted to kittenhood?”

“Nothing,” John mutters. “Should never have done this in the first place.”

Rodney sits up suddenly, almost losing his balance. He barely notices they’ve got to the infirmary. Jennifer sets them both on an empty bed. “So you _did_ do this. I fucking _knew it_, you complete moron. What the hell were you _thinking_, you idiot?” He pounces on John, punching with his back paws, hitting John’s shoulders with his front ones. John fights back with three paws, then rolls on the other one and yelps.

“Hey,” Jennifer shouts at them, “_hey_!” There’s a splash, and Rodney is soaked; he looks up. Jennifer is holding a half-empty bottle of water, and she does _not_ look pleased. “Stop it, the both of you. You’re acting like – like actual kittens, and I thought it was _you_ in there.”

“Yeah, well,” Rodney mutters, “we almost destroyed two civilisations once, I guess a cat fight was inevitable.”

“What?” John narrows his eyes.

Rodney sighs. “Nothing. I’ll see you later.” He goes to jump off the bed.

“Wait – Rodney! Where are you going?” Jennifer calls.

Rodney is already on the floor and half way across the infirmary. “My quarters,” he calls back.

“Rodney!” Jennifer repeats, and Rodney stops. He has the urge to put his head in his hands again.

“I never thought I’d say this, but where’s Zelenka when you need him,” he mutters. Turning to face her, he tries to indicate ‘home, bed, sleep’ using only his paws. Jennifer seems to get it after a while, and calls Ronon on the radio to come get him. Rodney doesn’t look at John when they leave.

Ronon sets him down in his quarters, and there’s a tablet on the centre of his bed, the words _The latest data –RZ_ on the screen. Rodney drags a pillow further down the bed with his teeth, until he can perch on it and lean across the screen without toppling over, and he works on the data for a while. Shadows in the room shift, and by the time his vision starts switching over to night-time, he’s trying to jerk himself awake every few seconds. He’s _close_ to something, if he could just have a few more minutes, he could work out the programming –

There’s something warm, as he starts waking up, something kind of wet, and it’s on his _head_ – he darts up, and there’s John, tongue hanging out mid-lick. “Whft?” he says.

“Were you – were you _licking_ me, Sheppard?” Rodney asks, incredulous, because he _couldn’t have been_.

John slips his tongue back into his mouth. “It was, uh … instinct. You were getting a little tangled, I was just combing.”

Rodney stares at him. John doesn’t move, except to shift uncomfortably as the silence and the staring stretches on, until finally he snaps, “_What_?”

“Since when has it _ever_ been appropriate for you to _lick my head_? For that matter, since when have you combed my hair at _all_?”

“Well if you hadn’t let it get so _tangled_ –”

“Oh, so you want a furball, is that it? You are going to your _own_ quarters to hack that thing up, mister.”

“So can I stay?” John asks, watching him with half an eye, and the real question here would be why is John so _annoying_? Rodney does not have time for whatever it is John is leading up to.

“_No_ you cannot stay, I have a lot of work to do.” Rodney turns back to the tablet, but John just shifts closer.

“Rodney, I came here to apologise, and I’m not leaving until you let me.” His voice is that calm, measured tone he only uses when he’s pissed. Rodney sighs, resigned.

“Fine. It won’t do you any good; you still got yourself turned into a _cat_ on _purpose_. But fine. Apologise.” Here is where human arms would come in handy, because Rodney could cross them. Instead, he makes his tail bigger, because that’s supposed to be intimidating.

It doesn’t work. “Don’t tempt me, I’ll start calling you Fluffy,” John says, and Rodney lowers his hackles. He still glares, though, which should be enough. “Okay. The thing is,” John starts, sounding unsure and keeping his eyes fixed on the blankets, “I kinda did get in the way of that machine, but it was the only way I could think of to talk to you.”

“You got turned into a cat so you could _talk_ to me? What are you, _nuts_? Why not just wait a couple of days, I’ll be back to normal then and so will you.” John is even more stupid than Rodney thought if he doesn’t even have a _good_ reason for being a cat. At least he had a _choice_.

“I just,” John says, tone measured and quiet again, and in his little cat body now he quivers with all the anger he’s storing up, “needed to talk to you, Rodney.”

“What _about_? What are you afraid of, Sheppard?”

“I’m not afraid.” John sits up, surprised.

“Please, I can smell it. You’ve been afraid for days. Don’t doubt the nose,” Rodney adds, as John makes as if to protest again. “I repeat: what are you afraid of?”

“I’m not,” John says through gritted teeth, gritted _sharp_ teeth, “afraid.”

Yeah, well, now Rodney is. “All right. What did you want to talk to me about?” He shifts away, but John shoots a paw out and puts it on his tail. Rodney stills.

“Rodney, don’t – don’t do that, okay, don’t be afraid of me.”

“You have sharp teeth and you’re pretty angry, and for some reason it’s directed at me, forgive me for being apprehensive,” Rodney snaps.

“Rodney, I just –” John moves forward, and Rodney takes a step back automatically. John stops, closes his eyes, clearly composing himself. “Rodney, _stop backing away_. I wanted to apologise for being a jerk, okay?”

That catches Rodney off-guard. “What?” he asks, and topples off the bed.

He hears something crunch as he lands, and a stab of white-hot pain in his shoulder. “Fuck,” he yelps.

“Rodney? _Rodney_?” He can’t open his eyes, but he feels what must be John’s nose nudging him.

“Ow, owowow, don’t touch me. You’ll make it worse.”

“What happened?” From the sound of John’s voice, he’s circling Rodney’s body.

“I think I just broke my shoulder. Here – my radio, it should be on the dresser, call for help.”

He hears soft paws, a few landings, and then John’s saying, “Teyla, Ronon, get in here, Rodney’s hurt. Teyla, Ronon, do you read me? _Dammit_,” and the sound of paws again. “They won’t be able to understand me,” he says, voice close now.

“Maybe they’ll come anyway. Neither of us can get out of that door on our own.” The pain is blossoming, but not as bad as he’d thought it would be. Probably endorphins or something.

He hears John’s paws as he paces. “Come on, come on,” John mutters, a low rumble under his breath. A minute goes by, and then another, and Rodney’s thinking it might be best if he just loses consciousness when he hears the door chime. There are footsteps, John yelling, “He’s here, he fell, he hurt his shoulder, get him to the infirmary _now_,” and somebody lifts him. It hurts like hell, and Rodney yells indistinctly, but then he’s being carried and he passes out.

When he comes to, he’s in the infirmary. He can smell it before he even opens his eyes, and spends a moment just taking it all in before he looks. Jennifer’s there, she hasn’t slept much lately. Other doctors, a few patients, someone’s been bleeding. John.

Rodney’s eyes open, and almost immediately his field of vision is filled by a furry black and white face. “Rodney, are you okay?” John asks, sniffing him all over.

“I’m fine, stop smelling me,” he replies, but it’s slow. The words take a lot longer to come out and form and float away than they normally do. He hears the echo of them half a second later.

“Doc,” John calls, “I think you gave him too much morphine.”

“What’s wrong?” Jennifer bustles over, and breaks out into a smile. “You’re awake. Hi, Rodney.”

“You’re so pretty,” he observes. John scowls at him. “What? She is.”

“You definitely gave him too much morphine,” John says to Jennifer, who looks back at him with a small shake of her head. “I hate that nobody can understand me,” he continues to Rodney.

“Well, you’re incomprehensible,” Rodney tries to say, but the syllables get smushed up somewhere. He knows it’s only been a few seconds he’s been awake, but he’s getting sleepy again. “Think I’m gonna nap,” he murmurs, eyes closing.

“Rodney? Rodney?” John’s voice follows him down into a dream. Where Atlantis is back under the sea and they’re fish, swimming along, and John loops the loop around him and says, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” and Rodney doesn’t know what he means, so he just swims.

When he wakes up again, things are less fuzzy, light is streaming in at the windows, and John is licking his head again. “Would you not?” Rodney asks, and thankfully the words are at their usual speed. Well, almost.

“I was trying to wake you up,” John says, moving away from Rodney’s head. “The science team has a program ready but they need you to look at it and, you know, get turned back into a human.”

“Did you give them the –”

“Yes, Rodney, I gave them the tablet you were working on. Come on, Dr Keller says you’ll be fine, it was just a fracture. Zelenka needs you in the lab. Let’s go.”

Rodney goes to stand, but the second he puts weight on his left foreleg, he crumples back to the blankets, wincing. “I can’t.”

“Ah.” John contemplates him for a minute. “I’ll be right back.”

Jennifer comes round to check on him a minute after John leaves, and Rodney tries not to wince as she examines his shoulder. “You need to keep weight off that leg until it heals properly,” she warns, and Rodney has no plans to disobey that. “I hear you’ll be turned back today,” she continues. She’s pleased about that, Rodney can smell it. “You come straight back for a full check-up when you’re back to yourself, okay? And then get some _rest_.”

“Oh, believe me, I plan to.” As much as he can possibly squeeze out of this – hell, maybe even a whole day. Who knows, stranger things have happened. Turning into a cat being one of those things.

John returns, then, with Zelenka. “How are you feeling, Rodney?” Zelenka asks, as he carefully scoops him into his arms. John perches on Zelenka’s shoulder, clinging on with his claws in his shirt.

“Oh, just peachy. Everything all set up?”

“We’ve run simulations and adjusted based on your calculations. We … haven’t tested it on live subjects yet, but …”

“The only live subjects are me and Rodney,” John finishes.

Zelenka looks at him questioningly, and Rodney repeats the statement; Zelenka nods. “Exactly. We can keep doing further tests, but I doubt we could make it any safer than it already is –”

“Just let me take a look at it, I’ll make sure it’s okay.” Rodney looks up at the pause and sees the look on Zelenka’s face. “What, do you really think I would go through with this if I weren’t sure it wouldn’t kill me?”

“Well,” Zelenka considers, “I suppose not.”

“Exactly. And what is that supposed to mean, you suppose not?”

“Nothing, Rodney, it means nothing.”

Rodney narrows his eyes.

“You’re not in the habit of risking your own life,” Zelenka says eventually, shrugging a little. John clings on tighter. “You know. Ever.”

“Oh please, like I’m not risking my life every time I go off-world or eat in the mess,” Rodney grumbles.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Zelenka answers, trying not to smile. The corners of his lips quirk up.

“Oh yes, because I actually get to _do_ that,” Rodney says, indignant, as they enter the lab. What looks like a makeshift version of the Ancient device they’d found is standing in the centre of the room, the computers moved around to make space for it. Zelenka sets Rodney down on the desk and brings over a tablet, going through screen by screen to show him the data. John stands nearby, tense, like he’s guarding Rodney. From what, that part is a mystery. Anyway, the data is exactly how Rodney thought it would be, based on everything the science teams had given him, so there’d be no reason the reversal wouldn’t happen. Unless it split his body into atomic particles and didn’t reconvene them, in which case he would just float around the lab or cease to exist or maybe both. But that’s only a tiny, tiny chance, so he decides not to mention it to John.

Zelenka starts the program and lays Rodney in the path of the machine. John hops down and stands next to him, and half a second before the program finishes, John says, “Hey, we’re gonna need clothes.”

Rodney opens his mouth but then it hits them and there’s a split-second of nothingness and then … John is very naked, and so is he, and they’re lying in a heap on the floor. His shoulder doesn’t hurt.

“Clothes,” John gasps, curling up to cover his modesty but that only curls him closer to Rodney, who is starting to flush from his toes _upwards_ and maybe he’s asleep and this is all an elaborate nightmare just to get him naked in the lab in front of everyone he works with. How are they ever going to take orders from him again? They’ve seen him _naked_.

Before he can work up a proper and complete panic, Zelenka throws a blanket over them, clearly prepared for this eventuality. He reaches under his desk and pulls out two bundles, throwing one to each of them. “All right, everybody out, give them some privacy,” he calls, and Rodney has never been so grateful for him.

Everyone leaves, so it’s just him and John, naked, pressed together still, and part of Rodney doesn’t really want to get dressed. Unfortunately, that’s the part up against John’s hip, and he’ll have to move fast if he doesn’t want this to get even more awkward than it already is, because if John feels him get hard he’ll probably never look him in the eye again. Which would be inconvenient for missions, and he’d have to request a transfer to Major Lorne’s team or something, and he’d miss Teyla and Ronon, and –

“Um.” John rolls away and pulls his pants on, and Rodney squashes the small surge of disappointment as he does the same. Gave up years ago, remember. “Listen, Rodney.”

He’s uncomfortable, now John’s seen him naked but probably didn’t want to, so he scrambles up and pulls a shirt on. “Yes?” He doesn’t mean to sound brusque, or impatient, but it’s either that or vulnerable and there’s enough of that going around already, what with the nakedness and all.

John stands too, and he hasn’t put a shirt on yet. Rodney forces himself not to look at John’s nipples. “That whole thing … look, I’m sorry I got myself turned into a cat, I just – I really needed to talk to you.”

“Yes, well instead you fractured my shoulder, so –”

John’s on him in a second, crowding him so he has to back against a wall. “John?” Rodney swallows, faintly.

“Shut up, McKay,” John growls, and that’s fucking hot, it just _is_. So for a moment Rodney thinks he’s hallucinating when John puts a hand up to his face, cupping along his jaw, and tilts his head, leans in. “Can I talk now?”

His face is two inches from Rodney’s. Rodney nods. He licks his lips and is vaguely aware of his cock jumping, because the look in John’s eyes is … mostly unreadable, but _dark_. His pupils are dilating.

“I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk about this. I heard you, when you were a cat and I wasn’t, saying something about being into me but I never noticed.” Rodney starts, but John doesn’t move. “And you’re right. I didn’t know. And I kind of freaked out about it, and I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry I didn’t do this sooner.” And he brushes his mouth – his _open_ mouth – lightly against Rodney’s. “Okay?” he breathes, and Rodney swallows. He can hardly breathe, let alone speak. “I’ll take that as a yes,” John says, and he’s smiling a little when he closes the distance.

Rodney’s body responds before his brain has had time to process the situation, so when he can _think_ or _feel_ again he’s already kissing John, hands in his hair, running his tongue along John’s lower lip, feeling him moan and just letting out the answering sound. John’s body covers his, pressing him against the wall; not forcefully in that it’s almost gentle, but forceful enough that it has _purpose_. Making out with John is approximately as hot as he’d surmised it would be, but the knowledge is a surprise nonetheless.

He shivers, after a while, and breaks away. “We should,” he pants a little, “get checked out, go to the infirmary.”

“You’re right.” John’s breathing heavily, and he’s still shirtless, and Rodney somehow forgot that.

“And then can we go back to my place and screw? Please _God_ can we screw?”

John brushes the length of his nose against Rodney’s in a gesture that on anyone else would be adorable, but on John is spine-melting. “Fuck yes,” he breathes, and some day Rodney is going to kick his ass for being such an idiot, but right now he can’t bring himself to care.


End file.
